A speaker at a recent Ruby on Rails conference titled his talk "What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too", but Smalltalk isn't dead. Seaside brought new attention to Smalltalk in recent years, and Smalltalk developers have new options like GNU Smalltalk, Pharo, and Gemstone GLASS. But we all know what this speaker was talking about. You'd expect a language like Smalltalk to attract developers in droves; in reality, Smalltalk's much less popular than clunkier, less productive languages and environments. The explosive Rails growth curve demonstrates the power of reaching out to developers. How can the Smalltalk community achieve similar results? And are these results really something that matter at all?
Bio: Giles Bowkett is an outspoken Ruby developer and blogger, with experience developing in many languages. He spoke about Seaside at OSCON in 2007, and Ruby Inside him awarded him Top Speaker of 2008 for his presentation on algorithmic music in Ruby.